Residency Goals and Objectives

I am so excited to reflect on this post at the end of the year to assess if I met all of my goals and objectives this year! I know that this year will be a huge learning curve, and that I will have many personal and professional learning opportunities.

Goal/Learning Objective #1: To efficiently and thoroughly workup a patient in less than 2 hours, identify all major drug therapy problems and develop a care plan with appropriate recommendations which are evidence-based (and alternatives) and monitoring parameters.

How to reach/achieve this:

Being proactive at working up patients at each rotation, and aiming to work up as many as I can (while maintaining the quality and time necessary for each one). By doing this I can practice doing patient work ups for numerous patients, conditions and subsequently various DTPs. By doing this I believe I will encounter numerous gaps in my thought process of my work up and subsequently can learn and practice the lessons I learn.

By actively seeking feedback from mentors and preceptors regarding my process of working up patients and identifying areas for improvement

By adapting a work up form to each rotation/patient as necessary and appropriate to:

Eliminate errors of forgetting to collect data

Increase my efficiency of documenting information

Create a template that provides an intuitive flow to complement my thought process.

Goal/Learning Objective #2: To efficiently perform head-to-toe assessments for both workups and follow-ups.

How to reach/achieve this:

By familiarizing myself with the common sign and symptoms, lab values, vital signs, imaging results, etc. associated with various disease states and how these relate to each organ system.

When encountering a new disease state (which I predict will be very common, especially in pediatrics) use the head-to-toe assessment to think of how the new disease changes the patient’s parameters (and how will this relate to my patient’s drug therapy)

To follow up each patient using head-to-toe and present my follow-ups to my preceptor in a head-to-toe manner.

Goal/Learning Objective #3: To critically appraise literature to formulate recommendations for my patients as well as answer drug information questions.

Through participating in journal clubs, and make notes of any differences between those facilitated by learners (e.g. OEE students, residents, pharmD students) vs. staff pharmacists.

And if any differences are noted decide which style/differences I want to implement when I facilitate a journal club

By seeking insight and guidance from my mentors and preceptors, and learning their individual processes for appraising primary literature

By developing a strong understanding of the differences between the pediatric and adult populations in terms of pharmacokinetics, physiology and developmental stages, etiology and clinical presentation of a given disease state and using these factors to help me decide whether or not I can use adult data/guidelines/RCTs and extrapolate to a pediatric patient.